I intended to design and make a holiday brochure for Florence in Italy.

   I also asked questions to an expert opinion. The expert thought that the paper used for the brochure should be in colour. This maybe his choice as most brochures use coloured paper. However, it makes the brochure stand out more in plain paper. Their opinion of how the brochure could be improved was that the front cover could be laminated. This could have been done as it would catch the customers’ attention more. I researched laminating although I did not use it because in real life when being mass produced, it would be very expensive to produce and brochures are free in travel agents. The expert also made a point that there could have been a company logo. The logo could have been put on the back of the brochure for emphasise of the company. To improve the stand, it was said that it should be painted more carefully. I agree with this and I do think the stand should be painted better. The stand still appeared attractive to the customers however. The best feature of the stand from the experts view was the colour (white). They also said that the best feature of the brochure was the front cover. This is a very good result as it is what attracts the customer most to picking the brochure up. The layout of the business card was said to be improved by the website being placed on the back. This may have been better as it would have appeared less cramped together, the information.

What alterations did you make as you were going along and what problems did you have?

At the beginning of my specification, I was planning to use the printer offset lithography to print my brochure but I realised it was going to be too expensive. Therefore, I used a photocopier to print my front cover which was far easier to get hold of and cheaper to mass produce.

If you were doing your project again what would you do differently?

If I were to take my brochure again, I would laminate the front cover so the paper is protected. I found that the paper would become slightly bent. Laminating it would also stop the cover from being dirty.  The shape of the brochure was quite basic and I would change this by cutting the edge in a curvy way to look more exciting. I would also use cover paper which is coloured. Cover paper is fairly strong and when it is laminated it produces a thicker paper known as cover board. If the brochure was to be manufactured in real life, I would use offset lithography which has large print runs from 250,000 upwards. The quality of the print is much higher also.

I would also make a business card stand for the business card to go into which would be fairly small. I would use a very strong card. I would use the same Italian drawing at the top of the stand to make the company recognisable for consumers.

1. Project began well and by the end of the first week a brief had been written, although I wasn’t quite sure what potential customers really wanted because I hadn’t time to discuss it.
2. In the second week, I discovered that brochures can be in different sizes but this didn’t present tto much of a problem, except that I realised that I would need to produce a range of sizes for the cover, which I did in my prototypes and also in orthographic drawings.
3. In the third week, I tried to find out abut different manufacturing processors that are used for printing all types of books and brochures. I looked for information on the internet and in books which I was very successful in doing. I did a questionnaire to potential consumers about what they would like the front of a brochure to look like. This gave me an indication of what the user wanted and it gave me a good direction to start in. However, I could have been more specific when I was asking my questions because some were not really relevant.
4. In my fourth week, I went to visit a printer shop to get information on types of printers which really helped me but I needed more specific information on the costs of printers.
5. In my fifth week, I just happened to be making a trip to Florence so I took some photographs while I was there to add to my research. I used these in my brochure by scanning them into a computer and minimising them.
6. I drew out my initial ideas in the sixth week for my front cover after analysing other existing products. I realised that most holiday brochures used A4 paper so I decided to use A5 to make mine standout. When adding to my project, I also made sketches of ideas for making a stand to put the brochure in. To support these ideas, I researched existing stands from the internet.
7. To improve my ideas of the stands, I would show I was aware of more materials such as plastic to make the stand.
8. About in the tenth week, I also decided to make a business card to advertise my brochure. I got very good research for this, as the existing products of business cards showed different ways of laying out the data.
9. In the twelfth week, I bought all of my materials which were correct and I didn’t have to make any modifications to the equipment. Although the paint for the stand came to a cost of £15 which was very expensive as I did not need all of this. The PVA glue was provided by the school and the MDF wood also.
10. I completed my stand in fifteenth week and I started making my brochure. My brochure was very easy to make as I had most of the equipment I needed already. I bought the thick cartridge paper and that was all I needed to buy. I had my front cover photocopied because it came out as a better quality rather than scanning it into the computer.
11. My business card design was printed out using a photocopier from photo card in a printer shop. This was done in the seventeenth week of my project. It was a very good way of mass producing the business card, as it was quick and good quality. I wouldn’t change the manufacture of it.

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